'How well you know her?'
'I've met her twice. You must know her a lot better to take a chance on that squeeze with the photo.'
'She skates around plenty. I figure maybe she has a couple of soft spots she don't want the old man to know about. I figure she can raise five grand easy.'
'A little weak,' I said. 'But pass it. You're broke, eh?'
'I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.'
'What you do for a living?'
'Insurance. I got desk room in Puss Walgreen's office, Fulwider Building, Western and Santa Monica.'
'When you open up, you open up. The books here in your apartment?'
He snapped his teeth and waved a brown hand. Confidence was oozing back into his manner. 'Hell, no. In storage.'
'You had a man bring them here and then you had a storage outfit come and take them away again right afterwards?'
'Sure. I don't want them moved direct from Geiger's place, do I?'
'You're smart,' I said admiringly. 'Anything incriminating in the joint right now?'
He looked worried again. He shook his head sharply.
'That's fine,' I told him. I looked across at Agnes. She had finished fixing her face and was staring at the wall, blank-eyed, hardly listening. Her face had the drowsiness which strain and shock induce, after their first incidence.
Brody flicked his eyes warily. 'Well?'
'How'd you come by the photo?'
He scowled. 'Listen, you got what you came after, got it plenty cheap. You done a nice neat job. Now go peddle it to your top man. I'm clean. I don't know nothing about any photo, do I, Agnes?'
The blonde opened her eyes and looked at him with vague but uncomplimentary speculation. 'A half smart guy,' she said with a tired sniff. 'That's all I ever draw. Never once a guy that's smart all the way around the course. Never once.'
I grinned at her. 'Did I hurt your head much?'
'You and every other man I ever met.'
I looked back at Brody. He was pinching his cigarette between his fingers, with a sort of twitch. His hand seemed to be shaking a little. His brown poker face was still smooth.
'We've got to agree on a story,' I said. 'For instance, Carmen wasn't here. That's very important. She wasn't here. That was a vision you saw.'
'Huh!' Brody sneered. 'If you say so, pal, and if — ' he put his hand out palm up and cupped the fingers and rolled the thumb gently against the index and middle fingers.
I nodded. 'We'll see. There might be a small contribution. You won't count it in grands, though. Now where did you get the picture?'
'A guy slipped it to me.'
'Uh-huh. A guy you just passed in the street. You wouldn't know him again. You never saw him before.'
Brody yawned. 'It dropped out of his pocket,' he leered.
'Uh-huh. Got an alibi for last night, poker pan?'
'Sure. I was right here. Agnes was with me. Okey, Agnes?'
'I'm beginning to feel sorry for you again,' I said.
His eyes flicked wide and his mouth hung loose, the cigarette balanced on his lower lip.
'You think you're smart and you're so goddamned dumb,' I told him. 'Even if you don't dance off up in Quentin, you have such a bleak long lonely time ahead of you.'
His cigarette jerked and dropped ash on his vest.
'Thinking about how smart you are,' I said.
'Take the air,' he growled suddenly. 'Dust. I got enough chinning with you. Beat it.'
'Okey.' I stood up and went over to the tall oak desk and took his two guns out of my pockets, laid them side by side on the blotter so that the barrels were exactly parallel. I reached my hat off the floor beside the davenport and started for the door.
Brody yelped: 'Hey!'
I turned and waited. His cigarette was jiggling like a doll on a coiled spring. 'Everything's smooth, ain't it?' he asked.
'Why, sure. This is a free country. You don't have to stay out of jail, if you don't want to. That is, if you're a citizen. Are you a citizen?'
He just stared at me, jiggling the cigarette. The blonde Agnes turned her head slowly and stared at me along the same level. Their glances contained almost the exact same blend of foxiness, doubt and frustrated anger. Agnes reached her silvery nails up abruptly and yanked a hair out of her head and broke it between her fingers, with a bitter jerk.
Brody said tightly: 'You're not going to any cops, brother. Not if it's the Sternwoods you're working for. I've got too much stuff on that family. You got your pictures and you got your hush. Go and peddle your papers.'
'Make your mind up,' I said. 'You told me to dust, I was on my way out, you hollered at me and I stopped, and now I'm on my way out again. Is that what you want?'
'You ain't got anything on me,' Brody said.
'Just a couple of murders. Small change in your circle.'
He didn't jump more than an inch, but it looked like a foot. The white cornea showed all around the tobacco-colored iris of his eyes. The brown skin of his face took on a greenish tinge in the lamplight.
Blonde Agnes let out a low animal wail and buried her head in a cushion on the end of the davenport. I stood there and admired the long line of her thighs.
Brody moistened his lips slowly and said: 'Sit down, pal. Maybe I have a little more for you. What's that crack about two murders mean?'
I leaned against the door. 'Where were you last night about seven-thirty, Joe?'
His mouth drooped sulkily and he stared down at the floor. 'I was watching a guy, a guy who had a nice racket I figured he needed a partner in. Geiger. I was watching him now and then to see had he any tough connections. I figure he has friends or he don't work the racket as open as he does. But they don't go to his house. Only dames.'
'You didn't watch hard enough,' I said. 'Go on.'
'I'm there last night on the street below Geiger's house. It's raining hard and I'm buttoned up in my coupe and I don't see anything. There's a car in front of Geiger's and another car a little way up the hill. That's why I stay down below. There's a big Buick parked down where I am and after a while I go over and take a gander into it. It's registered to Vivian Regan. Nothing happens, so I scram. That's all.' He waved his cigarette. His eyes crawled up and down my face.
'Could be,' I said. 'Know where that Buick is now?'
'Why would I?'
'In the Sheriff's garage. It was lifted out of twelve feet of water off Lido fish pier this a.m. There was a dead man in it. He had been sapped and the car pointed out the pier and the hand throttle pulled down.'
Brody was breathing hard. One of his feet tapped restlessly. 'Jesus, guy, you can't pin that one on me,' he said thickly.
'Why not? This Buick was down back of Geiger's according to you. Well, Mrs. Regan didn't have it out. Her chauffeur, a lad named Owen Taylor, had it out. He went over to Geiger's place to have words with him, because Owen Taylor was sweet on Carmen, and he didn't like the kind of games Geiger was playing with her. He let himself in the back way with a jimmy and a gun and he caught Geiger taking a photo of Carmen without any clothes on. So his gun went off, as guns will, and Geiger fell down dead and Owen ran away, but not without the photo negative Geiger had just taken. So you ran after him and took the photo from him. How else would you have got hold of it?'
Brody licked his lips. 'Yeah,' he said. 'But that don't make me knock him off. Sure, I heard the shots and
